Chengdu Travel Videos: Mind, Body, and Spirit

Note: Since the videos embedded within this post are Youtube links, you will need a VPN to view them if you’re in China.

Last year I spent several weeks with a small creative team to put together a series of promotional videos highlighting Chengdu for the local tourism bureau and Ctrip. We spent 11 days filming and roughly three months putting the films together. The whole process had a big impact on me. Since I started doing video work with Ctrip back in 2010, my interests have shifted to include film and I hope to make more of them in the future. This last set of videos (3 shorts) taught me a lot about making films, not least that I need to learn a whole lot more (follow the previous link if you do not have a VPN).

Before we jump into the videos, here are some behind the scenes looks of us capturing this goodness:

Filming on the banks across from the Leshan Giant Buddha, an hour outside of Chengdu

Capturing some temple Guqin action in Chengdu

The shorts are as follows:

Mind

A video about the pursuits that occupy Chengdunese people. We filmed a lot of close-ups of arts and crafts, games and workmanship to show what the region’s people like to get into and what they’re good at. Here is the description of the Chengdu Video: Mind for Chinatravel.net, Ctrip’s sister site.

Body

This video is about food and movement. We spent a lot of time with local break-dancers and sampled as many dishes as we could get our chopsticks into. We could have devoted hours to either topic, as people have already, but we wanted to tantalize people here and fill them with energy. Maybe the next project can go a little deeper into the elements shown in this short.

Spirit

This is the “epic” short that has the landscape shots, the long pans of temples; we hoped this would show the foundation of Chengdu Basin Shu Culture civilization – the water and the land … the colors and the lush abundance that has become proverbial even as it still informs every aspect of life outside the Third Ring. And within.

Check the videos out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment!